Mozambique's next president, Daniel Chapo. (Alfred Zuniga/AFP via Getty Images)
Last Thursday afternoon, Mozambique's National Electoral Commission (CNE) recognized Frelimo presidential candidate Daniel Chapo as the winner of the October 9 presidential election with almost 71% of the votes cast.
Chapo's appointment as the next president means that Frelimo, Mozambique's liberation movement that has led Mozambique since independence in 1975, will continue its activities without interruption.
According to the Electoral Commission's results, Mr. Chapo beat first place Vensancio Mondlane by more than 3.5 million votes, and second place Ossufo Momade, a candidate from the main opposition party Renamo, by almost 4.5 million votes.
Opposition candidates and their supporters strongly oppose it. Days after the election, Mondrain (who called himself VM7) livestreamed from Facebook and YouTube and said his team's simultaneous tally showed he had won the election. Later, official provisional results revealed that Chapo was in the lead, leading to calls for a boycott on the same day. On October 14, Maputo became a ghost town, with many people either heeding VM7's call or staying away to avoid possible chaos.
A federation of business organizations estimates that Mozambique's economy has lost more than 1.4 billion metisis (about $22 million), with business down 50% in most cities and provinces.
Tensions escalated into nationwide riots on October 17 and 18, leaving at least six people dead: two police officers and four civilians. Then, that Friday night, two key figures in the election were shot dead at close range on one of Maputo's main thoroughfares. Mr. Mondlane is represented by lawyer Elvino Díaz, and Paulo Guambe, deputy leader of Podemos, a political party that supports Mr. Mondlane. .
“It was very fast, very violent,” said witness Rafael Anastasio. The killing was the same as the 2015 shooting death of French-Mozambican constitutional law scholar Gilles Sistak.
He had publicly advocated that Renamo should govern the state it won over Frelimo in the 2014 election. He was shot dead outside a cafe in a fashionable area of Maputo. Renamo and Podemos say they intend to challenge Thursday's results in Mozambique's electoral court, the Constitutional Council.
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